Band 2 Anthropogenesis - H.P. Blavatsky

day are now beginning to rise against this "Pedigree," and even Darwin's natural selection theory, though its author had
never, probably, contemplated such widely stretched conclusions. The remarkable work of the Russian Scientist N. T.
Danilevsky -- "Darwinism, a Critical Investigation of the Theory" -- upsets it completely and without appeal, and so does
de Quatrefages in his last work. Our readers are recommended to examine the learned paper by Dr. Bourges -- read by
its author, a member of the Paris Anthropological Society at a recent official meeting of the latter -- called "Evolutionary
Psychology; the Evolution of Spirit, etc." in which he reconciles entirely the two teachings -- namely, those of the physical
and spiritual evolutions. He explains the origin of the variety of organic forms, made to fit their environments with such
evident intelligent design, by the existence and the mutual help and interaction of two principles in (manifest) nature, the
inner Conscious Principle adapting itself to physical nature and the innate potentialities in the latter. Thus the French
Scientist has to return to our old friend -- Archaeus, or the life-Principle -- without naming it, as Dr. Richardson has done
in England in his "Nerve-Force," etc. The same idea was recently developed in Germany by Baron Hellenbach, in his
remarkable work, "Individuality in the light of Biology and modern Philosophy."
We find the same conclusions arrived at in still another excellent volume of another Russian deep thinker, N. N. Strachof -
- who says in his "Fundamental Conceptions of Psychology and Physiology":-- "The most clear, as the most familiar, type
of development may be found in our own mental or physical evolution, which has served others as a model to follow . . . .
If organisms are entities . . . then it is only just to conclude and assert that the organic life strives to beget psychic life; but
it would be still more correct and in accordance with the spirit of these two categories of evolution to say, that the true
cause of organic life is the tendency of spirit to manifest in substantial forms, to clothe itself in substantial reality. It is the
highest form which contains the complete explanation of the lowest, never the reverse." This is admitting, as Bourges
does in the Memoire above quoted, the identity of this mysterious, integrally acting and organizing Principle with the Self-
Conscious and Inner Subject, which we call the EGO and the world at large -- the Soul. Thus, gradually, all the best
Scientists and Thinkers are approaching the Occultists in their general conclusions.
But such metaphysically inclined men of Science are out of court and will hardly be listened to. Schiller, in his magnificent
poem on
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 655 THE ONE UNPARDONABLE SIN.
the Veil of Isis, makes the mortal youth who dared to lift the impenetrable covering fall down dead after beholding naked
Truth in the face of the stern goddess. Have some of our Darwinians, so tenderly united in natural selection and affinity,
also gazed at the Saitic Mother bereft of her veils? One might almost suspect it after reading their theories. Their great
intellects must have collapsed while gauging too closely the uncovered face of Nature, leaving only the grey matter and
ganglia in their brain, to respond to blind physico-chemical forces. At any rate Shakespeare's lines apply admirably to our
modem Evolutionist who symbolizes that "proud man," who --
"Dress'd in a little brief authority;
Most ignorant of what he's most assured,
His glassy essence -- like an angry ape,
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven,
As make the Angels weep! . . . . "
These have nought to do with the "angels." Their only concern is the human ancestor, the pithecoid Noah who gave birth
to three sons -- the tailed Cynocephalus, the tailless Ape, and the "arboreal" Palaeolithic man. On this point, they will not
be contradicted. Every doubt expressed is immediately set down as an attempt to cripple scientific inquiry. The
insuperable difficulty at the very foundation of the evolution theory, namely, that no Darwinian is able to give even an
approximate definition of the period at which, and the form in which, the first man appeared, is smoothed down to a trifling
impediment, which is "really of no account." Every branch of knowledge is in the same predicament, we are informed. The
chemist bases his most abstruse calculations simply "upon a hypothesis of atoms and molecules, of which not one has
ever been seen isolated, weighed, or defined. The electrician speaks of magnetic fluids which have never tangibly
revealed themselves. No definite origin can be assigned either to molecules or magnetism. Science cannot and does not
pretend to any knowledge of the beginnings of law, matter or life, . . ." etc., etc. (Knowledge, January, 1882.)
And, withal, to reject a scientific hypothesis, however absurd, is to commit the one unpardonable sin! We risk it.
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 656 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
§ II.
THE ANCESTORS MANKIND IS OFFERED BY SCIENCE.
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"The question of questions for mankind -- the problem which underlies all others, and is more deeply interesting than any
other -- is the ascertainment of the place which man occupies in Nature, and of his relations to the Universe of things." --
HUXLEY.
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THE world stands divided this day, and hesitates between divine progenitors -- be they Adam and Eve or the lunar Pitris -
- and Bathybius Haeckelii, the gelatinous hermit of the briny deep. Having explained the occult theory, it may now be
compared with that of the modem Materialism. The reader is invited to choose between the two after having judged them
on their respective merits.